An improvement of this configuration would be to ensure the primary and standby LANs pass through different VC modules, with the output ports on the VC modules connected to separate Ethernet switches that are bridged together. This configuration would protect against the failure of a LOM port controller, the network ports on the Mezzanine card, a VC module, a switch or cabling, and would eliminate many more possible failure points. An example of such a configuration, using LOM ports 1 and 4 routed to different VC modules, is described in the next section.
The following is one example of using HP Virtual Connect to create a server profile for a BL860c server blade to minimize SPOFs for its network and Fiber Channel connections. Note this is one example, and many other acceptable HA configurations are possible depending on what Mezzanine cards and interconnect modules are available for a server blade to utilize.
Figure 9 shows an HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator window with information on a BL860c server bladed installed in device bay 7.
Figure 9: Onboard Administrator Window showing BL860c information for Device Bay 7
LOM and mezzanine card information
In this example, the BL860c has 4 embedded LOM NIC ports (ports 1 and 2 sharing one PCIe bus and ports 3 and 4 sharing another PCIe bus), an iLO (Integrated
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